


One Bad Stud

by Damkianna



Category: Streets of Fire (1984)
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Rescue, Rivalry, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21907453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Tom sat in the car with McCoy, and let himself enjoy it for a minute. The wind in his hair, and the dark streets whipping by, and McCoy next to him about as relaxed as he'd ever seen her, looking comfortable and maybe even kind of happy.He didn't want to ruin it.But they were getting close now. And when the time came for it, he cleared his throat and said, "Turn left."
Relationships: Tom Cody/Raven Shaddock
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	One Bad Stud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



> ♥
> 
> Title from the song in the movie, because it felt hopelessly appropriate. :D

Tom sat in the car with McCoy, and let himself enjoy it for a minute. The wind in his hair, and the dark streets whipping by, and McCoy next to him about as relaxed as he'd ever seen her, looking comfortable and maybe even kind of happy.

He didn't want to ruin it.

But they were getting close now. And when the time came for it, he cleared his throat and said, "Turn left."

"Huh?" McCoy said, squinting at him, and then did it anyway. "What, you got somewhere to be? Why didn't you say so?"

"Not the way you're thinking," Tom said. "I just—got to check on something, that's all."

McCoy's eyes went narrow. But she didn't stop driving.

It only took one more turn for her to figure out which way they were headed. He could see it on her face—and then he didn't have to look anymore, because she gave the steering wheel a smack with her open palm and said, "Oh, come on, Cody, you have _got_ to be kidding me."

"Do I seem like a kidder?"

"Okay, you _better_ be kidding me," McCoy said. "You better be practicing for your brand-new career as a kidder. Because no way are you stupid enough to go back to the Battery. Right?"

"We're not going back to the Battery," Tom said.

Because they weren't. They were just real close to it, that was all. Right up next to the edge of Bomber territory, conspicuously empty streets marking out borders most people knew better than to cross.

"Damn right we're not," McCoy muttered.

But she didn't stop, and she didn't kick him out the passenger side. She kept driving, cruising along slow when he asked her to, gaze flicking warily from one side of the street to the other.

"So where are we going, then?" she said, after maybe half an hour.

"Don't know," Tom said.

McCoy gave him a flat look. "You don't know. Something you just got to check on, so bad it can't wait for daylight, and you don't know where it is."

Tom shifted a little, and avoided her eyes. "I'll know it when I see it," he said.

Except maybe he wouldn't. Maybe there would be nothing to see. Maybe he'd been wrong.

But then they turned onto a new street, crawled along and passed the mouth of an alley littered with trash. And Tom looked, and saw something in it that gleamed a little, black and shining at the same time.

"Stop," he said.

McCoy braked. Even before the car stopped moving, Tom was levering himself up, vaulting out over the door without bothering to open it.

"Cody—"

Tom looked down, shuffled a flopped-open newspaper out of the way with his foot.

Yeah, that was Raven Shaddock, all right.

He looked bad. Blood, drying dark all over him, because nobody'd bothered to try and clean him up, and bruises coming up too, stark and obvious. He was still in his leather jacket—that was what had caught Tom's eye, the buttery shine of it.

Tom crouched down and touched him. Cold, but it was chilly out here, the pavement wet, and who knew how long he'd been out here. Tom shifted around, pulled the collar of the jacket out of the way and felt at the base of Shaddock's throat the way he'd learned in the army.

Not dead after all.

At least not yet, Tom thought, and just about the moment he thought it, that was when he heard the noise in the distance.

Great.

He sighed a little through his nose and grabbed for Shaddock, gripped him by the jacket and hauled him up until he could get a shoulder in Shaddock's gut. That made Shaddock groan, faint—cracked ribs, maybe. But he didn't wake.

"What the hell are you doing?" McCoy demanded.

"Not leaving him here," Tom said. "It's your car. Your call."

McCoy stared at him. "And what are you going to do," she said at last, "if I tell you there's no way in hell you're putting Raven Shaddock in my car?"

Tom looked at her.

She looked at the sky, and blew out a breath and shook her head. "Why am I even asking," she said. "Of course you'd walk. All right, come on. Come on, before the Bombers get here."

So she'd heard the noise too.

"It's not the Bombers," Tom said.

Sounded like them, sure. Motorcycles were motorcycles. And that was a dozen of them, easy—no more than a couple blocks away, now.

But the Bombers were the ones who'd dumped Shaddock here. They were done with him. There wasn't any reason for them to come around.

Tom heaved Shaddock up, and with a little help from McCoy, twisting around to lend him a hand from the driver's seat, they got Shaddock laid out in back. And Tom slung himself in the passenger side just in time to watch the first handful of motorcycles come roaring around the corner ahead of them.

They were Aces, maybe, if he had to guess. He'd been gone a long time. But last he'd heard, the Aces and the Bombers had had a feud going that hadn't been about to die down anytime soon.

They must have heard about the fight. They must have known the Bombers wouldn't exactly be planning to nurse Shaddock back to health, after he'd lost like that. And anybody with a score to settle with Shaddock would want a chance at him, now that the Bombers weren't backing him up.

"All right, hang on," McCoy said, grim and steady, and revved the engine. And then she pulled just about the tightest U-turn Tom had ever seen, not even touching the curb, wheels squealing.

Tom almost went for his rifle. Just to give them a couple warning shots. Just so they'd have something to think about.

But they might not even have seen Shaddock at all. They might not know there was anything in the car except a couple idiots who'd only just realized how close they were to Bomber territory. In which case giving them a reason to be mad, to keep chasing, wasn't exactly a good idea.

And Tom was starting to get a little better at figuring out what he wanted to fight for, and when not to fight at all.

They'd been spotted, sure enough. McCoy gunned it, took a couple tight corners—and four or five Aces had peeled off to follow them, but they didn't stick for long. Must have figured it wasn't worth the trouble to keep going, not for just one car. Not when they were out here looking for Shaddock.

And by the time they figured out they weren't going to find him, it would be too late.

McCoy kept driving like she was trying to lose somebody for another dozen blocks, just to be sure. And then she slowed down a little, and looked over, and said, "So where exactly were you planning on taking him?"

"Don't know," Tom said.

He had some options. Hadn't planned on any one in particular. He hadn't even been sure he'd be able to find Shaddock in the first place.

McCoy huffed out an irritated breath, and didn't look at him. "I might have a place," she said, after a minute.

"Okay," Tom said.

Because that really would be the better option—if anybody figured it might have been him, they'd go looking for him in his own boltholes, not in McCoy's. And because Tom had figured out the day he'd met her that McCoy's help was worth accepting, if you had the chance.

McCoy took them around to a different part of the city, a little further out. Building looked pretty rundown from the outside, but inside it was dry, everything scratched up or faded or both but clean enough.

The door was rigged up somehow. Tom looked away while McCoy undid it—because it was her place, and he wasn't going to forget it. He didn't need to know how to get in without her, because he wasn't ever going to try to.

He went and got Shaddock out of the car instead, carried him up the steps, and by then McCoy was done and they could go in.

"Still don't know what the hell you think you're going to do with him," she said, closing the door behind them.

Tom shrugged one shoulder. "Figured they'd dump him," he said, and then hesitated.

There were all kinds of things he could have told her. But he wasn't sure which one of them was the truth. Didn't quite have a handle on it himself. It was something about that fight, maybe. That Shaddock had showed up with all that firepower at his back, and then stuck to the heart of the terms anyway: just him and Tom. He could have had Tom killed any second, with a twitch of his eyebrow to any of the Bombers standing there with guns in hand. But he hadn't. Not even when Tom had had a sledgehammer and he hadn't.

He'd have let Tom kill him. Tom had seen it. He'd learned that look in the army, and he'd known it for what it was, when it showed on Shaddock's face. Shaddock had been angrier to have the fight evened out for him than he had been knowing Tom might take him out for real.

And for that—for fighting Tom one-on-one, when he hadn't had to, and keeping it all some kind of fair, wanting Tom to go ahead and use advantages when he had them—for that, he'd been dumped out back of an alley like garbage, so anybody who hated him could come along and make an example out of him.

"Didn't sit right," he said aloud at last.

McCoy looked at him for a second, and then shook her head. "You're something else, Tom Cody," she said. "And don't say thank you, because I'm not sure I meant that as a compliment."

"I like to think you might have," Tom said, mild, and she grinned at him.

Took a couple hours for Shaddock to come around.

Worked out okay. He was out for all the time it took to get one of the dusty mattresses in the back room covered up with a couple torn sheets, and to lay him out on it. There was a tap that still worked in the front, so Tom got some water and cleaned him up a little. Took a look at his ribs, too, since there was nobody to object to Tom laying his jacket open and peeling his bloodied shirt up.

Cracked after all, Tom decided. But not broken, which was good.

And it was only after Tom had set his clothes to rights again, and gotten more clean water to get the last of the crusted blood off Shaddock's face, that Shaddock came to.

Slow. Just twitched a little, first, at the touch of that cold water. Grimaced, but didn't open his eyes. And then did crack one of them, but only lay there peering at Tom out of it.

And then, soft and hoarse and scraping, he laughed.

Tom waited it out, and didn't look away.

"So this is it, huh?" Shaddock said, and the words were just as hoarse as the laugh had been. "Should've known you left me alive for a reason. And this is it."

Tom raised an eyebrow.

"Who'd you cut a deal with? Who are you going to give me to?" Shaddock stopped and grimaced, pushed himself up unsteadily on one elbow and then spat a little blood over the edge of the mattress onto the floor before he dropped back down again. "Must be offers on the table. Must be some real good ones. But I suppose you wouldn't want to ruin the surprise."

"Not giving you to anybody," Tom said.

And just like before, just like when Tom had stood there and looked at him and then tossed the sledgehammer away, somehow _that_ was the thing that made Shaddock's face twist up in fury: not that Tom had gotten the advantage over him, but that Tom wasn't going to use it.

"You'd better, Tom Cody," he bit out, "if you know what's good for you. I'm not asking for anybody's pity—"

"It's not pity," Tom said. "It wasn't last time, and it isn't this time." He paused, and thought about how to say it in a way Shaddock might listen to. "I don't like unfair fights, that's all."

Shaddock's eyes narrowed. "Sure you don't. That's why you came to the Battery for Ellen with that blonde friend of yours and a wheelman, and nothing else. What would you call that?"

"Even odds, I guess," Tom said mildly, and then looked away and shook his head a little. "I don't like unfair fights when I can do something about it."

Shaddock sneered at him, eyes hard, and looked away, tonguing absently at one of the worst splits in his lips.

"They don't have the right," Tom added.

And that made Shaddock look at him again, eyebrows high.

"The Aces," Tom said. "Or whoever else is out there right now looking for you, planning to teach you a lesson. They don't have the right. They weren't the ones who beat you."

 _I did_. He didn't say it, stopped just short of it, but the words were in the air anyway. He didn't know why, but it felt somehow like saying it outright would have sounded like—like he was saying something else, something he might not quite have _meant_ to say.

Shaddock was watching him like he might have heard it anyway, though.

"You going to teach me a lesson, Cody?" he said, very softly.

Tom didn't let the expression on his face change. But his heart was all of a sudden pounding.

"Is that what you're after?" Shaddock was adding, pushing himself up on that elbow again—and not so unsteadily, this time. "Huh? There's got to be something. There's got to be something in it for you." He smiled a little, except it wasn't a real smile, wasn't amused. It was small, and cold, and sharp. "Nobody does anything for free in this town."

"Oh, yeah?" Tom said. "And what do you have to offer me?"

He was just trying to make a point. Shaddock didn't have anything at all, not now—not money, not guns, not even a decent bike. As if Tom had saved him for a chance at his leather jacket.

But Shaddock was looking at him with that bright intent look he got, the way he'd looked at Tom that night, screaming and shouting and fire leaping all around him and his eyes on nothing but Tom. "It's a shorter list than it used to be," he acknowledged. "But you know that already, seeing as you're the guy I have to thank for shortening it. And you picked me up off the street anyway. So there must still be something I've got that you want, or you wouldn't have done it."

And then he came up further still, pushed himself up sitting and only winced a little when it must have jarred his ribs wrong.

Tom should have known what was coming. He knew how things worked in places like the Battery. Everybody looking to get whatever they could, however they could get it, and no rules.

But somehow it was still a surprise to him when Shaddock's hand caught him by the waistband—caught him by the waistband, and then went south.

"There must be something you need," Shaddock murmured coolly, "that you figure I can give you."

Tom's breath snagged in the back of his throat. He reached down and closed his hand around Shaddock's wrist.

And Shaddock went still, like he was waiting for something.

"Right," Tom heard himself say. "You like to play rough. I remember."

Shaddock looked up at him, and then smiled, real slow.

And for a minute, Tom thought about it. About what it would be like, if he said yes. If he got to push Shaddock's jacket off his shoulders, and that shirt up, when Shaddock was awake to know it—awake, and letting him do it anyway. Ellen had been it for him for such a long time; or at least it for him on the inside, however many girls had liked the look of his outside since then.

But Shaddock wouldn't be like those girls, there and gone, one night only. They were already tangled up, him and Tom, and Tom had only made it worse by going and finding him like this. He wouldn't be like Ellen, either. He'd be something, though. Something Tom wasn't sure he had a word for. And the thought of Shaddock pressed to that dusty mattress under him, or—or over him, well.

That was something, too. So Tom thought about it.

And then he took that thought and let it fall to the floor like a cool nine grand; because it turned out he did want it, but not like that.

At least he'd figured it out beforehand this time, instead of after like with Ellen.

"That's not how this thing's going to work," he said aloud, and pulled Shaddock's hand away from himself—ducked down, before Shaddock could react, and pressed his own hand where he knew for sure the bruising was the worst.

And Shaddock flinched and swore, ragged words catching in his throat, muscles jumping under Tom's hand.

"Couldn't keep up with me right now anyway," Tom added, bland.

Shaddock glared at him. "Want to bet?" he snapped.

Tom shrugged. "I got nothing to bet with," he said, and then tilted his head toward the door. "McCoy's got a car, though. And a grand. You could ask her."

He stayed where he was for a second, one hand tight around Shaddock's wrist and the other pressed over Shaddock's side. And then Shaddock's eyes started to get narrow again, and Tom cleared his throat and let go, and stood up.

"Don't think anybody saw us grab you," he said, moving toward the door. "But we should give it a day or two to be sure. And if anybody does come looking for you—they'll have to get past me first. Okay?"

Shaddock was staring at him. He didn't seem to know whether to look bewildered or angry, so he was splitting the difference. "You're either crazy," he said after a minute, "or you're an idiot."

Tom tilted his head like he was thinking it over. "I don't know," he said. "Might be both," and he smiled at Shaddock and then stepped out, and closed the door behind him.


End file.
